Plant Services

Lubricant storage and handling tips for world class contamination control.

The methods by which lubricants are stored, transferred and applied to machines play a large role in the success of a lubrication program. If you start out with contaminated oil, you will never achieve cleanliness targets for most machines. Implementing a world-class lubrication program is a sizable undertaking, but storage and handling is one area where you can affect the quality of lubrication for the whole plant in one stroke.
With few exceptions, new lubricants are unsuitably dirty for most applications. It is therefore imperative that new oil is properly filtered before it is installed for use. A new drum of lubricating oil will typically have a particle count of approximately 19/16/13 or higher. That means that every cubic…

EnCompass Program includes pioneering bearing rating life model, newly optimized products, and software

The SKF EnCompass Field Performance Program has launched with development of a pioneering new rolling bearing rating life model, optimized versions of four existing product lines, and innovative software tools to help predict and optimize the performance of bearing arrangements while in real-world service.
The new SKF Generalized Bearing Life Model has been created to help design engineers calculate a more realistic bearing rating life by considering more influencing factors than ever before. The model – built on the strengths of the current model developed by SKF more than 25 years ago and currently ISO-standardized worldwide – enables OEMs and end-users to more closely match bearings to actual application conditions. For the first…

Dan Miklovic is principal analyst with LNS Research. He is the author of LNS' Best Practices Guide: Asset Performance Management, and his primary focus is research and development in the asset and energy management practices. Dan has more than 40 years of experience in manufacturing IT, R&D, engineering, and sales across several industries, as well as more than 20 years of industry experience at companies such as Emerson Electric, Mallinckrodt Chemical, Weyerhaeuser, and Scott Products, as well as several consulting companies and software provider Aspen Technology.
PS: Are cloud technologies having a disruptive effect on asset management and condition monitoring?
DM: For asset management, rather than having a disruptive influence,…

Implementing ultrasound for condition monitoring applications can be easier than you think.

Over the past decade or so, it has been interesting to see the evolution of maintenance and reliability. To some, the word maintenance brings a perception of general housekeeping duties such as janitorial tasks or changing light bulbs, but for most, maintenance has become almost synonymous with reliability.
I feel like the reliability field is in a transitional phase as more people are becoming more proactive regarding maintenance rather than being reactive once a failure has happened. Additionally, the condition monitoring tools that are available today are very advanced, and in some cases can give the user almost instantaneous information in order to make a diagnosis on an asset. Mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones have been…

The chemical manufacturing industry is undergoing a paradigm shift with regard to its view toward reliability. Recent trends show an emphasis on creating failure-free cultures where the goal is to detect potential plant and equipment failures before they occur. Making this shift requires the early detection of potential issues, which requires companies to become more proactive and less reactive. This proactive mindset can be cultivated through the use of reliability and maintenance performance-improvement programs that give organizations visibility into their internal structures from the inside out.
Developing a failure-free culture helps achieve what we call “organizational reliability”—an environment that fosters the needed…

Dan Miklovic is principal analyst with LNS Research. He is the author of LNS' Best Practices Guide: Asset Performance Management, and his primary focus is research and development in the asset and energy management practices. Dan has more than 40 years of experience in manufacturing IT, R&D, engineering, and sales across several industries, as well as more than 20 years of industry experience at companies such as Emerson Electric, Mallinckrodt Chemical, Weyerhaeuser, and Scott Products, as well as several consulting companies and software provider Aspen Technology.
PS: Are cloud technologies having a disruptive effect on asset management and condition monitoring?
DM: For asset management, rather than having a disruptive influence,…

Five preventive maintenance tactics that increase plant reliability and control costs.

Maintenance engineers want to maximize the reliability, function, and efficiency of plant equipment and processes while increasing quality and productivity. Equipment failure is an unwelcome but unavoidable reality that negatively affects a facility’s production time, order fulfillment capability and workplace safety.
By looking at data on where equipment failures have historically occurred in hundreds of plants over a number of years, engineers can identify specific areas where failure is most likely to happen and schedule maintenance activities based on these predictions. Through the planned and selective application of sealants, coatings, and adhesives, manufacturers can protect equipment and facilities from wear, damage and…

Preview Plant Services' July 14 webcast to learn how big data will be impacting your plant.

Maintenance people no longer just "fix things." They now have the role of reliability professionals and are responsible for managing a process in which they:
Analyze machine data
Predict breakdowns
Implement procedures to address potential problems
Information needs have changed as well, and big data tools are now available to help. However, many plant teams and asset managers are reporting challenges to making the shift to proactive, predictive maintenance programs at their facilities. On July 14, 2015, at 11:00 a.m. ET, Plant Services will host a webcast on big data featuring a live question-and-answer format with two industry experts. Below are some takeaways from the upcoming presentation.Dan Miklovic, principal analyst at LNS…

As equipment gets more complex, plant teams are increasingly turning to OEMs and their analytics partners to understand and manage machine performance.

The Plant Services 2015 Disruptive Technology series offers a quarterly look at technology innovations that are generating rapid changes in how plant managers and engineers approach their jobs. The series continues this month by investigating ways that OEM-enabled condition monitoring is starting to impact wider machinery health programs and how remote monitoring programs are changing the relationship between OEMs and plant maintenance and reliability teams.
Your machines are talking to you. Do you always understand what they are saying? Who outside your plant would you allow to listen in and help translate?
Remote condition monitoring (CM) technologies enable effective, efficient predictive maintenance (PdM), and some of the most…

Dan Miklovic is principal analyst with LNS Research. He is the author of LNS' Best Practices Guide: Asset Performance Management, and his primary focus is research and development in the asset and energy management practices. Dan has more than 40 years of experience in manufacturing IT, R&D, engineering, and sales across several industries, as well as more than 20 years of industry experience at companies such as Emerson Electric, Mallinckrodt Chemical, Weyerhaeuser, and Scott Products, as well as several consulting companies and software provider Aspen Technology.
PS: Are cloud technologies having a disruptive effect on asset management and condition monitoring?
DM: For asset management, rather than having a disruptive influence,…

After a two-year delay, Minnesota’s much hated 1989 sales tax rebate program for capital equipment purchases ended last week. The change is a major coup for small businesses and the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, which lobbied hard for legislators to rescind a law many considered an unnecessary hardship.
According to the Minnesota Department of Revenue, about 2,000 factories spend $4 billion each year on new equipment and repair parts and then shell out $270 million for a sales tax they eventually get back. Under the old law, Minnesota factories had to pay sales tax, file returns and wait months to get rebates on every piece of equipment bought or repaired.
The change makes newly purchased capital equipment, parts and repairs tax-exempt.

Omnify Software, a provider of web-based Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software for discrete manufacturers, today announces a strategic partnership with Octopart, the electronic parts search engine, in order to give Omnify Empower users direct access to component information in Octopart without leaving their Omnify Empower environment.
The Octopart Search integration is an add-on module to the Empower PLM system. With this module, Empower users can search the Octopart database of a growing list of more than 30 million parts across thousands of suppliers. Users can check and create vendors, vendor parts, and associated items through a formal Part Request in Omnify Empower, while populating attributes/parameters, datasheets, and…

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Take the survey

After a two-year delay, Minnesota’s much hated 1989 sales tax rebate program for capital equipment purchases ended last week. The change is a major coup for small businesses and the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, which lobbied hard for legislators to rescind a law many considered an unnecessary hardship.
According to the Minnesota Department of Revenue, about 2,000 factories spend $4 billion each year on new equipment and repair parts and then shell out $270 million for a sales tax they eventually get back. Under the old law, Minnesota factories had to pay sales tax, file returns and wait months to get rebates on every piece of equipment bought or repaired.
The change makes newly purchased capital equipment, parts and repairs tax-exempt.

A contractor was setting up the stationary robot when it grabbed and crushed him

A robot has killed a contractor at one of Volkswagen’s production plants in Germany, the automaker has said.
The 22-year-old was part of a team that was setting up the stationary robot when it grabbed and crushed him against a metal plate, a VW spokesman said.
Read the full story at theguardian.com.

Jonathan Jaglom is the new CEO of MakerBot. He comes to the job with strong views of how 3D printing will change markets.

For many consumer and engineering prototyping customers, MakerBot is 3D printing.
Stratasys, MakerBot's parent company, is the largest 3D printer vendor, with over $750 million dollars in sales during 2014, according to Statista. So when a new CEO took them helm of MakerBot in late February, it was big news in the 3D printing world.
Read the full story on InformationWeek.com.

After a two-year delay, Minnesota’s much hated 1989 sales tax rebate program for capital equipment purchases ended last week. The change is a major coup for small businesses and the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, which lobbied hard for legislators to rescind a law many considered an unnecessary hardship.
According to the Minnesota Department of Revenue, about 2,000 factories spend $4 billion each year on new equipment and repair parts and then shell out $270 million for a sales tax they eventually get back. Under the old law, Minnesota factories had to pay sales tax, file returns and wait months to get rebates on every piece of equipment bought or repaired.
The change makes newly purchased capital equipment, parts and repairs tax-exempt.

In this Big Picture Interview, Kevin Davenport urges mapping technology to business needs, not vice-versa.

Kevin Davenport is senior manager of industry business development for manufacturing with Cisco in San Jose, Calif. Previously a controls engineer, he currently is part of the Cisco team developing the Industrial IP Advantage, an online community created to help manufacturing industry professionals bridge the gap between information technology and operations technology. In February, he showed how growing interest in customized products is affecting industrial manufacturing as part of a panel at the 2015 ARC Industry Forum in Orlando, Fla.
PS: At the ARC Forum, you said that consumers’ growing expectations that they can get products customized or tailored to their specifications is affecting industrial manufacturing, and that the…

New approach allows users to hook up own batch & streaming data, run queries with fast results

Big data is no longer a war between batch and streaming data processing. It's not either/or, but rather a matter of "and."
Enterprises increasingly need to integrate batch and streaming data processing within a common framework, from runtime to analytics. And yet, with the rise of streaming analytics, integrating streaming data into batch-based systems is non-trivial.
Getting data from disparate data stores and running analytics on them in real-time is a huge technological challenge. While there are two primary approaches to cracking this data federation problem today, a third has emerged that just might offer the most promise.
Read the full story at TechRepublic.

Thanks to big data, some equipment manufacturers have never been more nimble.
Companies facing anemic demand for new equipment are finding veins of new revenue in selling unique information that they can leverage into sales of replacement parts and consulting services that keep existing machines running longer and more efficiently.
Read the full story on wsj.com.

Learn what you need to do to comply with latest NFPA 70E safety labeling rules.

Complying with the requirements of NFPA 70E®, the National Fire Protection Association’s Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace, is a multi-faceted process and is the responsibility of the facility owner. Each of the five requirements shown in the sidebar is interdependent (i.e., having an arc flash risk assessment performed would be worthless without having labels properly applied to communicate potential life-saving information).
An arc-flash risk assessment is required for any electrical equipment operating at 50V or greater that may require inspections, adjustment, servicing, or maintenance while energized. Equipment that falls into this category is required to have the field marking (label) in place.
An arc-flash risk…

In June, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Washington, D.C., sent Congress a report that highlights various issues that keep industry from achieving better energy efficiency. “Barriers to Industrial Energy Efficiency” also pinpoints opportunities to address many of these factors.
The report and the study that underpins it were prepared in response to Section 7 of the American Energy Manufacturing Technical Corrections Act; it directs the Secretary of Energy to conduct a study, in coordination with industry and other stakeholders, of barriers to better industrial energy efficiency.The report examines three areas that could improve industrial energy efficiency:
end-use efficiency;
demand response (i.e., changes in consumption patterns…

Without proper power, an electrical device may malfunction, fail prematurely, or not operate at all.

Power quality determines how fit electrical power is to run consumer devices. Synchronizing the voltage frequency and phase allows electrical systems to function as they're intended to without significant loss of performance or life. The term is used to describe electric power that drives an electrical load and the load's ability to function properly. Without the proper power, an electrical device (or load) may malfunction, fail prematurely, or not operate at all. There are many ways in which electric power can be of poor quality and many more causes of such poor quality power.
The electric power system, in general, comprises electricity generation (AC power), electric power transmission, and ultimately electricity distribution to electric…

Enhanced visualization capabilities designed to advance new product introduction

Building on several years of work with Cascade Technologies, Inc. (www.cascadetechnologies.com), GE (www.ge.com) has announced a multi-year joint development agreement with this Palo Alto-based company. The collaboration will focus on applying and improving simulation software that enables engineers to virtually look inside a gas turbine as it operates and gain a better understanding of the turbulent fluid, chemical and acoustic processes occurring within advanced, low-emissions gas-turbine combustion systems.
“The global energy industry looks to GE as a leader in high efficiency, with current HA gas turbines designed to deliver more than 61 percent combined cycle efficiency. The enhanced simulation and visualization capabilities enabled…

This article discusses the advantages and limitations of each technology in various wastewater treatment applications.

Blower selection is an important decision when designing a new wastewater treatment plant or upgrading existing facilities. The proper selection of blower equipment for the application, as well as purchasing from a reputable supplier, can save thousands of dollars in energy, repairs and maintenance costs. This article provides an overview of the blower technologies available for wastewater treatment, and discusses the advantages and limitations of each technology in various wastewater treatment applications.
Take a look at a municipal wastewater treatment plant near a textile factory in Asia (Figure 1). Is there any question as to why we treat industrial wastewater? The use of blowers for aeration and mixing accounts for 40 to 75 percent…

Cloud-based climate controls help keep your plant the perfect temperature
It can be difficult to optimize the climate of plant offices, maintenance shops, stockrooms and warehouses, particularly for multi-site or global organizations. New cloud-based systems facilitate transparency and control, reduce energy costs and consumption, and address security concerns.
HVAC controls
The new Smart Cloud Climate Control System, developed collaboratively by SoftServe UGE and Panasonic Europe’s heating and cooling solution division, enables simultaneous control of the climate within multiple facilities from a single device. It allows centralized monitoring and one-click temperature optimization in all sites, and it permits the ability react quickly…

It takes a good home to know how to build a good home – even when constructing protective housing for electronics and electrical components.
So, though it's headquartered in Germany as part of the Friedhelm Loh Group, Rittal Corp. (www.rittal.us) has been operating in the United States for 33 years, manufacturing in Ohio for 26 years, and designing, building, selling, and supporting its enclosures and other products for North America at its plant in Urbana, OH, for about 20 years. The 512,000-square-foot plant is located on 105 acres, and its approximately 600 employees cut, form, weld, paint, and assemble about 1,200 enclosures and wall-mount enclosures per day and more than 50 integrated enclosures with cooling systems per day (Figure…

Industrial production ticked up 0.3% in June as the mining and utilities sectors saw a boost from an increase in crude oil extraction.
The index of manufacturing, mining and utilities increased slightly in June after falling 0.2% in May, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday.
Read the full story on USAToday.com.

Manufacturing company De-Sta-Co, which makes a range of automation and productivity equipment, plans to close its facility in Wheeling, IL, and transfer 100 jobs to a facotry outside of Nashville, TN.
The loss of jobs in the suburb is the latest example of a manufacturer leaving Illinois. Despite some companies expanding here, other manufacturers have shifted production to places like Indiana and Wisconsin, lured by big incentive packages and chasing lower operating costs.
Read the full story on chicagobusiness.com.

Expecting women to find their way into manufacturing—and thrive in it—by paying lip service to “diversity” isn’t enough, a Manufacturing Institute study finds.

One of the more obvious ways to fill the U.S. manufacturing sector's skilled-workers gap is by recruiting and retaining more women. A new study finds that manufacturing can attract more women by making a concerted effort to recruit them through their social networks; retaining them through mentorships, better pay and more flexible hours; and fostering girls’ interest in manufacturing careers as early as fourth grade.
Read the full story on IndustryWeek.com.

Oilfield service companies (OFS), the backbone of the oil and gas industry, are closely following the movements of such customers as Halliburton, Schlumberger, Cameron International, FMC Technologies, and Baker Hughes. These customers are also leveraging important trends for their customers simply because they have to in order to maintain their competitive edge.
One key trend that most oil and gas companies seem to be doing a pretty good job at is limiting their exposure to any one region by diversifying into multiple international markets. Experts point to how they have been counting on overseas business due to the better market conditions than in North America in the last few years. For instance, Schlumberger recently set up a joint…

Traditional safety concerns coupled with newer cyber threats are increasing the challenge of ensuring safe and secure industrial operations. Risks to people, property, the environment, and business continuity are at stake. Smarter technologies and safety instrumented systems (SIS) are helping companies comply with safety regulations and standards from entities such as OSHA, the EPA, the IEC, and the ISA.
Safety platform
Layers of protection help prevent systematic failures. Vendor HIMA recommends having a safety platform that is independent from process control system platforms. “Using different technologies significantly increases the effort required to hack both systems,” says Stefan Ditting, product manager at HIMA Paul Hildebrandt…

Training is only as good as its application, so follow arc-flash safety rules even if doing so slows you down

The inconvenience of gearing up in personal protection equipment (PPE) encourages employees not to follow arc-flash safety rules, so why are employees trained in the first place? They are trained to cover the liability. The company can say that all electrical and mechanical employees have had arc-flash training, so the company can no longer be held accountable if an accident happens.
Now you have reasons to not follow the training and can claim ignorance as you were not required to take a test at the end of the training. Usually it is good to have some measurement of how well you learned the material. Since you have been trained in arc-flash safety, you, as an individual, are now responsible for your life when working in a control panel…

Learn what you need to do to comply with latest NFPA 70E safety labeling rules.

Complying with the requirements of NFPA 70E®, the National Fire Protection Association’s Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace, is a multi-faceted process and is the responsibility of the facility owner. Each of the five requirements shown in the sidebar is interdependent (i.e., having an arc flash risk assessment performed would be worthless without having labels properly applied to communicate potential life-saving information).
An arc-flash risk assessment is required for any electrical equipment operating at 50V or greater that may require inspections, adjustment, servicing, or maintenance while energized. Equipment that falls into this category is required to have the field marking (label) in place.
An arc-flash risk…

Training is only as good as its application, so follow arc-flash safety rules even if doing so slows you down

The inconvenience of gearing up in personal protection equipment (PPE) encourages employees not to follow arc-flash safety rules, so why are employees trained in the first place? They are trained to cover the liability. The company can say that all electrical and mechanical employees have had arc-flash training, so the company can no longer be held accountable if an accident happens.
Now you have reasons to not follow the training and can claim ignorance as you were not required to take a test at the end of the training. Usually it is good to have some measurement of how well you learned the material. Since you have been trained in arc-flash safety, you, as an individual, are now responsible for your life when working in a control panel…

While remote monitoring solutions like HMI can provide cost-savings and increased efficiency, it’s important to understand the security risks associated with this technology and how to protect against them.

When you wake up in the morning, you can program your coffee maker upstairs with your smartphone and get a notification when your cup of coffee is done brewing downstairs. You can also turn up the thermostat with the touch of your phone to increase the temperature before you even get out of bed. This technology is part of the Internet of Things and it is helping to make people’s everyday lives more convenient and efficient.
The Internet of Things revolves around increased machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, and is built on cloud computing and networks of data-gathering sensors. Beyond our daily lives at home, this concept is also becoming widely used in the industrial sector and has been dubbed the Industrial Internet of Things…

IFS, the global enterprise applications company, today announces that it has signed an agreement with the owners of VisionWaves B.V. (“VisionWaves”) to purchase 100% of the company’s shares. The purchase price will be paid in cash.
VisionWaves provides operational intelligence software that helps customers accelerate their strategy realization and boost business performance.
Its unique model-driven, top-down methodology not only provides leaders and decision makers with a clear picture of their business’s performance in real-time, but also enables them to take action and continually improve operations and business models.
By combining VisionWaves with IFS’s industry-focused solutions, customers can benefit from:
VisionWaves’…

Commissioning and configuring new devices has long been a hassle for industrial manufacturers.

Device configuration historically has been done one device at a time by manually entering values for each parameter that needs to be defined in the device. There are a couple of notable risks to watch out for with this approach. First: It’s easy to make typing errors. Second: It’s not unheard of for a technician working out in the field to miss a new device during the configuration process or to take a device out of service, reconfigure it and then forget to put it back into service. In the latter case, it may look to the control system like it’s working properly, but it’s actually not measuring the process.
Additionally, plants can run into trouble if the individuals doing the configurations don’t have expertise in the…

Dow Chemical is among those eyeing unmanned aircraft to help cut accident risk.

Anyone who’s seen the devastating footage from post-earthquake Nepal knows drones have already altered the way films and videos are shot. But the technology may soon transform a much less glamorous industry: safety.
Dow Chemical is among those companies that have requested permission from the FAA to use unmanned aircraft commercially, citing safety among their reasons for doing so.
Read the full story on TheNewOrleansAdvocate.com.

Are you a product pro? Can you correctly identify a product with nothing more than a close-up photo? Test your skills and find out.

Are you the best maintenance worker at your plant? Prove it. Test your product knowledge with Plant Services Maintenance Close-Up. All you have to do is correctly identify the product pictured below. We’ve used a macro lens and some creative cropping to make it a little more challenging.Do you want to test your skills? Just select the answer you think is correct and click the “submit” button.

American factory workers will soon be replaced by sophisticated robots, and this threatens the economic well-being of future generations — or so we're told.
Fear not. Far from dismantling the American workforce, new labor-saving technologies are instead poised to serve as vital engines of job-creation and economic growth for years to come — if leaders are prepared to take advantage of them.
Read the full perspective on jsonline.com.

Selecting the right gear can help servos meet the demand for more complex moves at higher torques and speeds.

At times a motor’s capability may be limited to the point where it requires gearing. As servo manufacturers develop more powerful motors that can muscle applications through more complicated moves and produce higher torques and speeds, these motors require gearheads equal to the task.
Interestingly, only about a third of the motion control systems in service use gearing at all. There are, of course, good reasons to do so. Using a gearhead with a servo motor or using an integrated gearmotor can enable the use of a smaller motor, thereby reducing the system size and cost. There are three primary advantages of going with gears, each of which can enable the use of smaller motors and drives and therefore lower total system cost:
Torque…

Replacing a traditional motion control system with direct-drive technology improves efficiency and design flexibility.

Let’s face it — under trying economic times, you look for any competitive advantage that improves your margins and adds money to the bottom line. A good place to investigate is with machine design. Simplified machines with fewer components that run more efficiently are gaining positive reviews. Better yet, they’re cheaper to build. With a lower total cost of ownership and a quicker return on investment, these innovative, flexible machines are useful investments.
Unfortunately, older rotary and linear motion actuation technologies like gearboxes, transmissions, rack-and-pinion actuation or belt-driven actuators can stand in the way for machine builders who want to take machine design efficiencies to the next level. For example,…

Thomas Wilk investigates how manufacturers are using intelligence effectively on the plant floor.

Since the birth of the smart transmitter in the early 1980s, manufacturers have chased a vision of using intelligent technologies to drive automated process and resource efficiencies on the plant floor.
The latest manifestation of this vision is the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), also known as Industry 4.0. Both terms are often used as shorthand to describe the ways that connected machines can monitor physical processes and conditions, and then make decentralized decisions on how to optimize those processes. The potential exists for billions of linked smart devices to collaborate and communicate as part of the IIoT, and to enable customized solutions that help individual plants operate more safely, reliably, and efficiently.
In…

Outdated images of manufacturing are a major barrier to recruiting top new talent to the field, lawmakers and industry leaders say.

Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.) says when he visited Dogfish Head Brewery's bottling plant in his state last year, he was struck by the quiet and clean environment where eight members of a 24-person team worked a shift that required the ability to program computers, troubleshoot issues and monitor quality control. This is not the setting some of today's parents might envision, however, when they think of a manufacturer.
Read the full story on USNews.com.

Willy Shih, a professor of management at Harvard Business School, has spent more time in factories than in academia.

Willy Shih, a professor of management at Harvard Business School, has spent more time in factories than in academia.
The son of Chinese immigrants, he grew up in Wisconsin and Illinois and earned a doctorate in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Shih spoke recently with The Wall Street Journal about manufacturing and why a domestic manufacturing renaissance won’t be easy to pull off.
Read the full story on wsj.com.

For students across the country, summer is synonymous with warm weather and relaxation. But learning doesn't have to end when the school year does, and more and more organizations are taking advantage of the summer break to host programs designed to get students interested in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.
To view these 10 programs, read "10 initiatives engaging and teaching students the importance of STEM fields" from Control Design.

The industrial workforce is changing, and we need to give incoming workers the skills and motivation they need to succeed.

Grace never has been a hallmark of the baby boomers, so it should come as no surprise that they are not quietly riding into the sunset of retirement. Younger workers waiting to move up will have to pry the parking passes out of their cold, dead hands.
Reluctance to step aside can be found in all occupations, manufacturing included. The median age of the manufacturing workforce spiked to 46.1 years in 2013, up from 40.5 years in 2000, statistics from the U.S. Dept. of Labor indicate. For high-skilled manufacturing workers, the average age is 57. Thin investment portfolios are the only thing preventing them from plotting their retirements.
Retire they will, of course, or eventually leave the break room feet first.
Retirement-related turnover…

The industrial workforce is changing, and we need to give incoming workers the skills and motivation they need to succeed.

Grace never has been a hallmark of the baby boomers, so it should come as no surprise that they are not quietly riding into the sunset of retirement. Younger workers waiting to move up will have to pry the parking passes out of their cold, dead hands.
Reluctance to step aside can be found in all occupations, manufacturing included. The median age of the manufacturing workforce spiked to 46.1 years in 2013, up from 40.5 years in 2000, statistics from the U.S. Dept. of Labor indicate. For high-skilled manufacturing workers, the average age is 57. Thin investment portfolios are the only thing preventing them from plotting their retirements.
Retire they will, of course, or eventually leave the break room feet first.
Retirement-related turnover…

Outdated images of manufacturing are a major barrier to recruiting top new talent to the field, lawmakers and industry leaders say.

Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.) says when he visited Dogfish Head Brewery's bottling plant in his state last year, he was struck by the quiet and clean environment where eight members of a 24-person team worked a shift that required the ability to program computers, troubleshoot issues and monitor quality control. This is not the setting some of today's parents might envision, however, when they think of a manufacturer.
Read the full story on USNews.com.

In this Plant Profile, a German manufacturer stakes a claim in Michigan to optimize service to North American customers.

Global manufacturer of tube and bar processing machinery Rattunde held an official ribbon-cutting ceremony this past summer to celebrate the July 25 opening its new manufacturing facility in Caledonia, MI.
Rattunde President Rick Stadler cuts the ribbon to officially open the company’s new facility in Caledonia, MI.
Rattunde Corporation is the subsidiary of Rattunde & Co. GmbH, based in Ludwigslust, Germany. Rattunde machinery systems process bar and tube stock into various end products used by manufacturers in the auto, appliance, off-highway, transportation and other industries throughout North America.
Their new 30,000-sq-ft facility employ 16 people, and was erected to build tooling for Rattunde machinery systems as well as to…

Pepperl+Fuchs' PS3500 diagnostic module monitors the health of power supplies

Pepperl+Fuchs' PS3500 diagnostic module continuously monitors the health and efficiency of PS3500 power supplies and primary-side power conditions. These 24-Vdc, 15-A power modules are modular, hot-swappable, easily integrate into plant asset management systems through RS485/HART, EDDL or FDT/DTM technologies, and plug directly into a three- or six-position chassis/backplane.

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